Assuming these proposed clean energy plans are achieved, total annual renewable electricity generation will increase by nearly four times between now and 2030. This increase is equivalent to all of India’s current energy demand.

Here are some key highlights:

China will increase the share of non-fossil fuel in primary energy consumption to around 20 percent by 2030;

European Union will achieve at least a 27 percent share of renewable energy consumption by 2030;

U.S. will increase the U.S. share of renewables—beyond hydropower—in the electricity generation mix to 20 percent by 2030.

The report also analyzed the current climate plans submitted by all the countries to the UNFCCC, the so-called INDCs. INDCs (intended nationally determined contributions) have been submitted by more than 150 countries and are expected to provide the fundamental plans for a global deal on climate change next month.

This WRI report preceded the release of IEA's "World Energy Outlook 2015," which gives approximately similar projections but with longer targets: Renewables-based generation reaches 50 percent in the EU by 2040, around 30 percent in China and Japan and above 25 percent in the U.S. and India.

"World leaders meeting in Paris must set a clear direction for the accelerated transformation of the global energy sector." Fatih Birol, executive director, IEA.

Unfortunately, according to the IEA these INDCs and current renewables projections for emissions trajectory implies a long-term temperature increase of 2.7C by 2100. Therefore, more must be done to help all the countries accelerate, grow and implement this massive clean energy transition.

The world's unregarded forests are at risk. Intact forest is now being destroyed at an annual rate that threatens to cancel out any attempts to contain global warming by controlling greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study.

As the world's population grows and the planet warms, demand for water will rise but the quality and reliability of the supply is expected to deteriorate, the United Nations said Monday in this year's World Water Development Report.

"We need new solutions in managing water resources so as to meet emerging challenges to water security caused by population growth and climate change," said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in a statement. "If we do nothing, some five billion people will be living in areas with poor access to water by 2050."

Despite a court-ordered injunction barring anyone from coming within 5 meters (approximately 16.4 feet) of two of its BC construction sites, opponents of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion sent a clear message Saturday that they would not back down.

Twenty-eight demonstrators were arrested March 17 after blocking the front gate to Kinder Morgan's tank farm in Burnaby, BC for four hours, according to a press release put out by Protect the Inlet, the group leading the protest.

Climate change is a big, ugly, unwieldy problem, and it's getting worse by the day. Emissions are rising. Ice is melting, and virtually no one is taking the carbon crisis as seriously as the issue demands. Countries need to radically overhaul their energy systems in just a few short decades, replacing coal, oil and gas with clean energy. Even if countries overcome the political obstacles necessary to meet that aim, they can expect heat waves, drought and storms unseen in the history of human civilization and enough flooding to submerge Miami Beach.

Trump has loudly declared his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement, but, behind the tweets and the headlines, U.S. officials and scientists have carried on working with international partners to fight climate change, Reuters reported Wednesday.

A Hollywood scriptwriter couldn't make this up. One day after new data revealed widespread toxic water contamination near coal ash disposal sites, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt announced a proposal to repeal the very 2015 EPA safeguards that had required this data to be tracked and released in the first place. Clean water is a basic human right that should never be treated as collateral damage on a corporate balance sheet, but that is exactly what is happening.